New Teen-Trend Alert: Late-Night Vamping

A group of academics studying the phenomenon have an answer to giraffe boy’s plea: Kids vamp because of peer pressure and a need to feel like they have adult agency in their own lives. And it’s true; adults are also up until 4 a.m. watching a video of a giraffe tonguing a steak and sending texts over the transom. But at least we’re mature enough to call it what it is: “a slow descent into desperate madness.”

A new teen trend called “vamping” is keeping adolescents up all night, but it has nothing to do with Twilight reenactments or sex fetishes. Vamping, as the New York Times explains, is a tame social craze in which teens forgo precious, sweet sleep to talk to their friends, watch YouTube tutorials on how to make hip-hop beats, and post selfies tagged #vampires or #breakingnight. As one young night owl tells the Times: “Sometimes I look up and it’s 3 a.m. and I’m watching a video of a giraffe eating a steak. And I wonder, ‘How did I get here?’”